Sanctum

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[CLINKING] Peacocks. This summer, during the biggest sporting event of the year, Peacock turns to two broadcasting legends for the Olympics coverage you can't find anywhere else. I think they mean us. Oh, [BLEEP] Um-- [CLEARS THROAT] With an incredible duo sure to take home the comedy gold, Olympic highlights with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. New episodes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, only on Peacock. Coming to Apple TV+ on August 9th. You're the Marine? Yeah. You're the ex-con. Yeah, I did time, but you're only going to cast aspersions at me. From the director of Mr. and Mrs.

Smith and The Bourne Identity comes a new film. It's your first job. I know what I'm doing. It's a little late for a crit change. Starring Matt Damon. Everybody in New England is after us. And Casey Affleck. Go, go, go, go, go. What are you doing? Taking notes. Taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. The Instigators, rated R. Streaming August 9th on Apple TV+. Howdy, folks. Today's DNR episode is brought to you by two awesome kickstarters. The first is One Deck Dungeon, all the excitement of a roguelike dungeon crawl in 54 cards. Guys, what this is is a really awesome card game that is essentially a roguelike that you play on your table.

And it has a PDF that you can download for free on their Kickstarter, as well as original music based off of the game that you can listen to while you play. And that is also available on the Kickstarter. They're making their way to their fourth stretch goal now, so you are sure to get this item. And when they unlock that stretch goal, they're going to add a fifth dungeon with a new boss and a new song to go with it. So definitely check them out. They're really cool guys. The second Kickstarter is Dungeon Crawler, The Bahamut. This is the mini to end all minis, guys.

This miniature is a Bahamut miniature that has an eight by eight base. It is literally so big that your one by one miniature can fit on its head. So your character can ride this Bahamut. I'm not saying it should, I'm saying it could. You can paint it yourself or you can buy it pre-painted and it is gorgeous. Seriously guys, I cannot wait to get my hands on this. I'm hoping to paint mine myself and I'm going to go with purple and black, 'cause I think it would look awesome that way, but the pre-painted ones are also gorgeous. This one unfortunately still has a long ways to go.

It has 19 days left and it still needs to make over $20,000. So help out by spreading the word as best you can and backing them yourself, because this is not just a mini. It is also a display piece and I think you guys would fucking love it. So go check them out. You can find both of these Kickstarters on our Facebook fan page or just search Kickstarter using the phrases One Deck Dungeon and The Bahamut respectively. Thank you guys so much. Make sure to tell them that we sent you and enjoy the show. - Let's do that thing and go around the table and introduce ourselves, starting with Mac.

- Hi, I'm Mac and I play Caluna Vulgaris, the Wilding Shaman. - And Eric. - Eric here and I play Ordon King Shield, Dwarven Knight. - And Jasper. - Hey, this is Jasper. I play Merrick, Aethelred, Human Cleric. - And last and certainly not least, Bri. - Hi, I'm Brianna and I play Thanatos, the Diceroy Sion. And that's Jason. - Oh yeah. I didn't say who I was this time. Okay. That's weird. I've done this. - You know what's weird? I wasn't even paying attention, but I was able to tell because the length was off. - You're right, it did feel off. Holy shit. - So that's Jason.

- I'm me. Hi everybody. I'm the Dungeon Master. I don't, that's weird. I've done this fucking hundreds of times. It feels- - I'm professional. - Really? Yeah, well, I guess I quit. I guess I'm done. - Enough is enough and it's time for a change. - Oh, and hi everyone. - Hello everyone. I'm Mac and I will be your DM for today. - Done. - This is the last time on the show. We played live in front of Tharyathon, which was amazing. And we should try and do more live sessions 'cause that was really, really fun and nerve wracking, but fun. But you guys managed to get to Brightport and more specifically House Dragonkeep.

And you kind of bedded down for the night and you were trying to relax. Tessie was being, not shifty, but just it kind of came off as more busy, specifically to Merrick. And after you guys laid down for the night, Thanos went exploring after earlier in the evening, kind of getting shut down. David stopped her from going downstairs. And of course, Thanos being Thanos and in impetuous youth, that just told her, "Oh, I should be going downstairs as soon as your back is turned." So she did and found Bree down there, ran back eventually and told Merrick about it.

And then Merrick and Kaluna accompanied her downstairs and they had a long talk. Now, after that was all wrapped up, I would imagine, is Thanos still sitting at the top of the stairs, her and Kaluna? - Yes. Sitting is not the word, but yeah. - Okay, so just kind of like ready for action, just at the top of the stairs. So you're pretty far away, but I mean, yeah. - Thanos is sitting. - Okay. - But Kaluna, I would imagine is standing. - I would imagine Merrick and Merrick and Bree would be walking out of here, so venturing up the steps would obviously see the two of them.

- As soon as they came into the view, Thanos would stand up. - Kaluna has a dagger out, but they're not going to brandish it or anything. They're just sort of like watching. - Right, and Bree would be kind of head down, maybe even adjusting to light, 'cause it's a little darker in there than it was there. There were torches and stuff, but it's not the same as like a fully lit house. - I kind of imagine Merrick is being very gentle and sort of guiding her almost like she's, I don't know, maybe a hand on her back and like holding her hand is sort of, I don't know, like kind of like shuffling her down the hall a little bit, very gently.

And whenever he sees, if Kaluna and Thanos come into view, I think he would be looking out for that, and I think he would hold his hand up, like, "Hang back, like hang back, it's cool, like it's cool." - Thanos is gonna run forward immediately, and could she, what is Bree wearing? Like, is she wearing like short sleeves? - No, it's kind of this, it's kind of like leather armor. It's like black leather armor, but a little tattered, to be honest. There's definitely been some combat damage, especially near the top, near the neck and the chest area. There's clearly been swipes taken out of it.

- They didn't give her new clothes before they put her in the dungeon, rude, Tessia. But are her wrists exposed, essentially? - Yeah, like, yeah, she's wearing long sleeves and stuff, but like, yeah, one is definitely exposed, because again, like it's sort of tattered, but yeah, she'd be kind of like rubbing her wrists a bit, actually, after the shackles were taken off. - Thanos would probably run over and like check for bruises to see if she's okay, though there's nothing she could do about it if she wasn't. - Oh, do me a favor, roll a perception check.

- Damn, I got good perception. I mean, not this time, but like, what's 14, it's good. I forgot. - You should not have said anything, clearly. - For those of you at home. - You're looking at Merrick's wrist, yeah, you're looking at Merrick's wrist and thinking like, I hope she's okay. - Wow, she's got some really swollen. - Harrier than I thought they'd be. - And blonde, why blonde, do you die? - Where'd you get box died, you're in pain. - Geez, okay, so that is a one, yeah. So that's a 15 total. - That's, you're gonna, they're not really bruised. It's not, she wasn't struggling and there, she had, it doesn't look like she'd been down here for a really long time and it's not bruised, but Thanos is going to notice just the hint of this.

It looks like something under the skin and it looks like this black, almost cloudy, inky, like spider webbing. - Oh, I forgot about that. I should specify that the way she went about this is that she grabbed Bree's arm and pushed up whatever sleeve she had. I feel like that affects everything. - Bree's gonna instinctively try to pull back and just not, more look at Merrick than her, like who is this fucking kid? Like almost not, just looking at her like, looking at Merrick like, okay, does she not know what kind of danger she could be in? Like get her off of me, that type of thing.

- Yeah, I think Merrick would immediately, just as much as Bree would sort of back off, you know, like, whoa, what the, Merrick would try to step in the way, like, uh-uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I don't know what that affects, that perception of what she actually ends up seeing, but Merrick would be like, this is not okay right now. - Does that affect what she saw? - No, no, just, 'cause it would be just the tips of that. Like you could tell, it's definitely something that does not belong on the skin or under the skin or anything, it's weird.

But yeah, that would be what Thanos sees before maybe getting pushed back a little bit. - She'll actually back off this time because she just wanted to see if she had any bruises, but she's gonna look a little bit confused and kind of look around Merrick, like what the fuck, but not say anything. - After Bree kind of gets her bearings, like just, first of all, she has no idea why Thanos would be running over to check, but after, after, just a second, I'm all right, it's fine. - You have bruises, she's gonna look over to Kaluna and then say louder, she has bruises.

Kind of like, come on. - Kaluna would sort of like swivel their head over to Thanos, like, uh, and then they would sort of look back over to Bree, like sort of raise their brow, I guess. So they're like, do you want me to help or would you rather I stay back? Just that sort of look. - She'll see this and it's not a bruise, it's a long story. Seriously, I'm okay. - What is it? - Well, you see. (laughing) - She's, she's gonna open her mouth and then, not to be rude, can I, can I ask who this is? - Yeah, so Bree, this is Thanos, a new friend of ours and has been with us for a little bit of time and of course Kaluna.

We're, there's lots more to understand and I think maybe you should be part of some debriefing, but we can wait until tomorrow morning, but just know that Thanos is a friend and Merrick's gonna look at Thanos when he says that. - Bree would hold her hand out and try and shake Thanos's hand. - Thanos will like sit up a little bit straighter, like almost like when a soldier wasn't paying attention and then like their boss is right behind them, like, right, yes, and then shake her hand back. - Brianna. - Hi. - Merrick's gonna say, you two have a lot in common, I bet you're gonna be fast friends.

Is she in your party? Merrick's gonna look at Thanos and raise his eyebrows and say, absolutely, right? - Thanos is gonna like kind of beam a little bit, like she's smiling. Probably the most anyone's ever seen her smile. - Yeah, she's got some power behind her. I think you, like I said, I think you two might have something in common. Look, it's late, it is the middle of the night, right, Jason? - Oh, yes, yeah, it's the 10th of Thor right now, just think after midnight, so sometime in the morning. - Okay, look, this is a lot to be happening in the middle of the night, whenever we're actually in the safest place we could possibly be in Brightport, maybe in Theria, right?

Let's just get some sleep, get some good, comfortable rest. We've got a lot to talk about tomorrow and a lot of stuff ahead of us too. I need to find David 'cause we've got to get you set up, Bree. You're not gonna sleep on a dungeon floor anymore, okay? - She can share my room. - He's gonna, Merrick's just gonna be like, okay, like, Bree, what do you, how do you feel? - Yeah, that's fine, as long as I'm not taking up space. - Great, okay, let's, can we all get some rest? Everything's cool, everything's gonna be all right. And thanks for getting my back, everybody.

- So everyone's sort of heading upstairs and, so is there a need to find David or is it just-- - No, I think Thanos said, stay with me, so let's not bother anybody, but let's get some sleep. - So everyone's gonna get ready and lay down now. To get the order correct, Ordon's in a room by himself, still sleeping, I would imagine, unless something has happened to wake him up. - Please like snoring, like, so loud. And like, it's like the best sleep he's ever had. - You can probably hear me from the bottom of the steps. - I would imagine that, almost wake up and go back to it.

And then Kaluna and Merrick are in a room and I guess Thanos and Bree are gonna be in a room. After all this goes down, would Kaluna and Merrick be talking about anything or Thanos to Bree or anything like that? - I mean, Merrick would wanna, has something to be able to talk about with Kaluna, but it wouldn't be for very long. It would be kind of once they started getting settled in and as the lights are out, it's just like the last thing before falling asleep kind of a thing. - Okay. - Merrick's gonna say, "Hey, I need a favor." - Yeah? - "I need the knife back." - They're going to pick up the knife from where it was sitting next to their face.

(group laughing) Yeah, they would have gone to bed, like still fully armored, keeping the knife close. Like they're not taking any chances and they're gonna, I don't know, slide it over to him or hand it to him, however they would be sleeping. - Like stab it over to him? - Yeah, just stab it next to his face. (grunts) Sleep well. - Basically, that's it. He's gonna be like, "Cool, thanks. "I made a promise just like you did for me, so." - They're just gonna sort of pet whatever they can reach. Just so he doesn't have to say anything else, just like, "We get it," sort of thing.

- Okay, okay, good night. - Just to let you know, Brie doesn't know Thanos at all, so it would probably be a little awkward. It's probably just like, "Let's just settle into the night. "Let's just go to sleep." So I guess, I'm guessing they're sharing a bed? - I think Thanos would be fine sleeping on the floor and giving Brie the bed. Essentially, kind of what I imagine happening, we don't even have to role play the whole thing, is Thanos would just be like really annoyingly offering her things. Do you want bandages? Do you want water? Do you wanna borrow this?

Just offering her shit until she tells her to just go to sleep and then she just goes to sleep on the floor. - Yeah, I would imagine. It's not-- - Even Thanos realizes this isn't the time for questions, but she really weirdly wants to help, so she'd just be like, "Do you wanna borrow my tunic? "Do you wanna sleep in this instead? "Do you wanna?" Until at one point, Brie would probably draw the line and be like, "Go the fuck to sleep." - Right, and it wouldn't be her being a bitch, it's just like there's a lot of shit on her mind, so it's just like, "Come on, can we just, "I don't even know you, thank you, it's very polite, "but can we just please sleep?" - Yeah.

- Okay. - That's how that would probably go. - All right, so how's about we pick things up in the morning? So, Tessie and David would be downstairs and there'd be a few roving guards and stuff, doing rounds or that type of thing. Brie would wake up pretty early, I don't know about everyone else. - Kaluna wakes up with the sun. - Yeah, Merrick actually gets up pretty stupid early, 'cause he does some meditation stuff, and then he'd probably try to get down to the kitchen at some point early. - Okay, so this would be a thing where as people kind of funnel down, Tessie would greet them and David is already working on something, like something to eat, something, not necessarily a full-fledged breakfast, but at least something to kind of get people going, like fruit and little finger sandwich type things.

So, let's see here. Brie and Thanos would probably be up, I'm guessing Thanos would get up around the same time as Brie? - Probably. - Okay. I picture Thanos as a light sleeper, I don't know. - Yeah, she is. - Okay. - And also, she'd put her armor on before they go downstairs. - Okay. - Like that. I imagine that it's been cleaned and given back at this point. - What about Ordon? - Ordon will be up probably relatively early. He won't be sleeping in long. - He wakes up at lunchtime. - It's always lunchtime when he wakes up. - Typical dwarf. - Is that racist? I don't know if that's racist.

- I don't think so. It would be racist for a hobby, 'cause that's actually their stereotype. - Okay. Dwarves are eaters in Theria. They're not shy about it. Like they can go a while without eating, but then they do not shy away from buffets. Like they will load up for the next meal. - Hot. - Let's see here. When... When... Tessia sees Merrick, I think she would kind of want to pull him aside for just a second. - Cool. Consider him pulled. - Right, I'm guessing you went exploring last night. - Yeah, not by... Not exactly by choice, but kind of to help. And he's gonna sort of nod over like, like he's suggesting that somebody else was snooping around.

Talk to your visitor. - I'm glad to see that she's out of the dungeon. That's not exactly where we wanted her to be, but she was quite insistent. You know that I understand where she is more than most people. She can try to shackle herself up in a dungeon if she wants to, but she's trapped inside in ways that no, not many people could really understand. So we had a talk, we had a chat, and yeah, I think she's gonna be okay, one way or the other. - Is she going to be taking off with you then? - We haven't talked about anything, but I'm gonna be honest with you.

I feel like she might be very valuable right now for us, which brings me to something too. I need your help, I think. And there's a lot to talk about. - Well, we could sit down and have breakfast, maybe gather everyone. - I think that's the way to do it. I think we all need to be together. There's no secrets at this point, but yeah, there's some complications that we need to discuss. - She's gonna nod her head, there's always complications. - Tell me about it. - So I'm imagining everyone's gonna start getting together here, and it would be pretty clear that people are meeting in that parlor area, and there's food set out and drink, and water and tea, and all kinds of nice stuff.

Like, Devu just set this up. - It's like the continental breakfast at a hotel when you're doing a road trip. - I have always imagined this room as super cozy, just really comfy furniture, just warm tones, like color-wise, just very, very nice. So with everyone gathered, is this a thing where Merrick wanted to start off, or what? 'Cause there's lots, for everyone to catch everyone else. - Yeah, I know, I know. I think Merrick would wanna try to lead the conversation, 'cause he wants to kind of cut to the chase. There's tons of stuff to talk about, but they're really there for one big reason, although there's a lot of information to get across.

So unless anybody else wants to sort of jump in, I think Merrick would be like, "Okay." So anybody else wanna? - One quick question before we start. Would anyone else have opted out of this and just went their own separate way, or is everyone here? - I think we're all there. - Okay. - Just before we start, Kalluna would sort of unabashedly stare at Bree the entire time. Not in a like, "I'm gonna fuck you up. One wrong step, I'm gonna kill you, bitch." It's just like, it's very much their concern. - Right, no, it's the elephant in the room, basically. It is a concern.

And I would imagine she would sort of be avoiding eye contact a lot, like maybe staring at the floor and be sitting right next to Merrick. (Kalluna laughing) - Kalluna's just like leaning on the table to look over. (all laughing) She's like, "Look past Merrick." - I think Ordon will look toward Merrick and ask, who is this? - Yeah, so let's start from the beginning. Ordon, this is Bree. Bree, this is Ordon. You've already met Phantos. Ordon is another new friend, and he's definitely part of our party at this point. Right, Ordon? You're still with us. - Right.

- Yeah, so there's a lot to download here for absolutely everybody, and I kind of want to cut to the chase. So Ordon, Bree, Bree, Ordon. Bree, Ordon is an amazing, amazing fighter and has a lot of knowledge. He also shares a lot of the problems that I've gone through and that Una went through when it comes to his faith. Ordon, Bree is one of the most powerful people I've ever met. She has some abilities that you may be familiar with, and Merrick's gonna do his thumb over to Phantos. - Do I notice that? - Unless you were looking away, I'd say yeah. - Sorry, my cat.

Phantos will perk up a bit, but she's not gonna say anything yet, but she's gonna perk up, and she's standing, by the way, like she never sat down. - That doesn't shock me. - And then she's gonna kind of look to Bree and then back to Merrick, but again, not say anything, just like she's figuring it out. - And Bree would wave to Ordon, and when you start talking about her again, just kind of like eyes back to the floor, Tessie would speak up, "I'm really sorry you had to find her under those circumstances." - Who's she speaking to specifically? - Just the group, just the group, just kind of one more apology to everyone as a whole, just to make sure that it's like, "We weren't keeping her there under her," 'cause that's how she's afraid it comes off.

- Yeah. - And then she would be speaking to Bree specifically, like looking at her, "I'm very glad to see you out of the chains." And Bree would just kind of give this very slight nod and then kind of eyes back to the floor a bit. - You have her chained up? - Tessie would look at Ordon. It was upon her request. - Oh, okay. - Merrick's gonna try to jump in. At this point, he's trying to prevent scope creep, right? He's trying to make sure that we can focus. So he's, there's some stuff about Bree that makes her feel like she might be a danger to people sometimes, and so she has to be kept away, but that's not necessary anymore, and he's gonna be looking at Bree when he says that, kind of like he's saying that in a protective way.

It's always complicated, just like everything else is, but she's fine, and she's a good friend, Ordon, so, and so is Tessie. - Okay, I'll accept that for now. - So is there anybody else that doesn't know anybody here? Tessie, for everybody that doesn't know, Tessie is the kindest and probably smartest person in Brightport, and also the mother-in-law of a very good friend of mine, and one of Kaluna's. - Kaluna will just be shoving a sandwich in their mouth, and they'll sort of like freeze, like, uh, but then they'll continue eating the sandwich, like, eh, whatever.

- Tessie would speak up. You're far too kind, Merrick. - Well, I'm kind of trying to butter you up a little bit. I'll be honest. - She would just smile at that. - Okay, I know everybody kind of knows part of the story here, and I know we're trying to be focused on it. Tessie, we need some help. We're here looking for, we're looking for help. There's two complications, maybe three. Then you go down them in order. Number one, there's an army being built. This is an army of demons, and I don't know if you know anything about this, if you've caught wind of it, but they're not from our plane of existence, and they, bottom line, wanna take over absolutely everything.

You with me so far? - So far, yes. I'm not sure what I can do to help. - Well, for now, they're sealed. They're locked, they're trapped. They can't get here, but they're trying to break that seal, and they're trying to do it soon. We don't have a lot of time if we're gonna do anything about that at all, if there's anything to do. Okay, so that's complication number one. Complication number two, that sounded crazy, but I just told you about a demon army being built. So the gods evidently live among us, literally. They've been trapped, and they don't know that they're trapped.

This was something done by the Aladrin, evidently, long, long, long ago. But look, for now, they're stuck, and it's kinda the same thing. They're sealed away, and they don't know that they're there. You're with me so far, right? Two complications. - At this point, she's kind of laying her head against her hand, like her arms, against the arm of the chair she's sitting in, just sort of taking all this in, and her eyes are gonna go wide a couple of times, like, okay, that is quite a story. Keep going, please. And she'll kind of gesture with her hand. Yes, please.

- Okay, all of that sounds insane. But just trust me for the moment. We've found out a lot of information about the way that everything is sealed up and trapped. And look, I didn't believe any of this from the very beginning. It just seemed too ridiculous to me. But the more we've been digging, the more it kind of feels like maybe this is kind of true. So believe me, I'm skeptical, but I'm on board. So just take it for granted that this is real, as real as it can be. The problem here is, from what we can gather, it's the same seal. So the thing that's keeping the demons away is also the thing that's keeping the gods away.

And if we break that seal or if we destroy it in some way, it does it for both, maybe or not. That's kind of vague. All I know is this. We know where the seal should be. We know that it's actually a physical place. And we know that we need to get there before the demons are able to break it themselves. At least that. So that's why we're here. This is a complicated journey for us. And we're looking for ways to make it a little bit less complicated. And honestly, I know that you've helped me in the party in the past, and I thought maybe there's something in the basement or maybe you know somebody who has a thing or a person or a dragon maybe that could help us along our way.

- Well, of course, any resources at the house are yours to help you, but you don't mind if I ask a few questions, do you? - Absolutely not. Doesn't mean I'm gonna have answers, but I'll do my best. - So you're saying the gods walk among us, that they are real and physical. - Yeah, they don't know it. Imagine that they're trapped and kind of have amnesia. I mean, Tessie, you could be a god, let's put it that way. And you wouldn't know it. - And you also said that there's demons that are on their way. You also said that they're sealed, they're trapped. - That's right.

- How would they get to the seal? - That's a great question. I don't know. I just know that that's the way for them to be able to break through. There's something I haven't mentioned yet. It doesn't really throw a wrench in the plans that I'm asking of you, but it kind of throws a wrench in anyway. I don't know, I guess Merica is sitting. He's not like standing and lecturing. I think he's sitting, but he's leaning towards Tessie and sort of really trying to engage her in the story. He's gonna try to lean even closer, not like in her face, breathing on her.

- Tessie, yeah. - He's gonna lean forward and say, "He's back." - She's gonna tilt her head just a bit. - Who? - He's already looking for Jetzia. - Her face is gonna stiffen quite a bit. She's usually got this very, like a gentle appearance and stuff. And while you're telling the story, it's a multitude of like, are you fucking kidding me? That's a lot of information to take in. As soon as you say that, her face is gonna get very stern. Where is he? - Right now, he's trapped too, but he's... If not a lieutenant in the army, then maybe leading the whole goddamn thing.

- Does she know? - Not that I know of. And as far as I'm concerned, she never will. - We could send people down to Esterhold just to keep an eye on her, but I think she's going to notice. - Yeah, and I'll be honest with you. I think you and I know that whatever you send down there is not gonna do a hell of a lot of good, but it'd make me feel safer at least. - Well, at the very least, we can send people to keep an eye on things and to send back word. I don't feel right doing nothing. - I agree. It's something. It might not protect her, but at least we'll know something.

- All right, what do you need from me? What can I do? - We need to head north. We need to head into the cold, into the snow. We're heading to another continent. The seal's there. The problem is, and we talked about this many times, he's gonna look around at the party. We've talked about it since we found out all about this. What's the best way to get there? And what's the best way for us to succeed? We could go with a guide. We could sail. We could get there and die on the way. What we need is to get to the seal as fast as we can, as safely as we can, and when we get there, we need to be able to survive the cold.

We need provisions. I'm asking a lot, but this is potentially the most important thing I've ever had to do with. - I'm assuming you're talking about going to Kian. - Yeah. - I would let you take Amara, but I'm not sure any of you can speak to her, and even if you could, how would we keep you from freezing to death? - Well, that's exactly one of the questions I had for you. I don't know magic items and spells and enchantments and stuff like that. I don't know. Do you know anybody? Do you have a thing that can keep us safe, keep us warm? Talk to a dragon? I don't know.

We're grasping. - And I think Merrick would actually legitimately be a little bit like he's breaking, a little bit like he's, he feels a little desperate, and it's gonna come through. Can you give me a couple of hours to reach out to some people? - You can take as long as you need. If this can work, then this is gonna be the fastest way for us to get there, just anything would be, this is important. - Is there anything else I should know about? - Merrick's gonna look around the rest of the group. Am I missing anything? - Bree's gonna be looking at you, by the way.

Like during the course of this conversation, you're not exactly sure when, but the course of you laying all this out, she's not looking at the floor anymore. She's kind of looking at you like almost mouth agape, like are you fucking, that's what we're up against. - She didn't say any of that, right? It's just the looks, right? - No, just like, yeah. And eventually it would just be just more like wow, okay. - I think at this point, I think the last thing that Merrick would end up doing, sort of to finish, is he would let out a huge sigh and then sit way back into his chair, kind of like a holy shit sigh.

Is this really happening? Like it's kind of hitting him, what they have to do. - I think Ordon might speak up at this point. He'd look at Tessie and say, we don't exactly have a lot of information on demons either. I have fought plenty of creatures in my life, but I have no idea what a demon army is technically capable of. I don't even know if my weapons can hurt them. If you could point us in the direction where we might be able to get some information, that we could research that while you see what you can do about arranging transportation. - I actually may be able to help with that immediately.

There's a section in my office, there's some books confiscated from this old Tiefling library, it used to be in the city, but it burned down. And as you know, there was a large portion of time in various history where people didn't see a difference between Tieflings and demons. So there is probably some information in those. - Kaluna will very abruptly stop eating and put that down whenever they had going to their face, like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - You don't say, that's almost new information. - Huh, huh. - Never heard about this. - Cool. Is there anything else that I haven't mentioned?

- You're more than welcome to take a look in the library while I speak to some people and hopefully I can get you some information. At the very least before the end of the day. - That would be amazing. Speaking of speaking to people, Merrick's gonna turn to Bree. I don't wanna put you on the spot, but this is gonna probably take a little bit of power. And I think whatever it means for this seal, I have a feeling that your power and Thanatos here is gonna be critical. Could you get on board with this? - I don't know what's gonna happen. I haven't used any of my power since, since Lautford.

- Yeah, Merrick will raise his hand up, like, you don't have to say anything, I get it. - And she's gonna notice that. - Did you tell your entire group? Do they know? - Is she saying that and everybody can hear her? - I mean, she's sitting right next to you. She's not gonna whisper. I mean, it's yeah. - I mean, is she saying that like out loud? - Yeah, like I would say, you know, to her it's more like if I'm gonna be traveling with you, that's like, I feel like everyone should know more like that, like more of a statement. - Yeah, okay, okay. No, it's not my call.

I made a promise to you, but who you are and what you can do is your business. So it's your call. - She'll take a look around the room and then take a deep breath, kind of steady herself. I was in Lockford and helping out a team we sent in to deal with the werewolves in the area. And things got really bad. And in the middle of the fight, I was bitten. She's gonna kind of pull back the left side of her hair and just kind of show off where like her armor is like clearly visibly damaged, like up top, like it's kind of thin to begin with. It's sort of this leather and right around the collarbone region, there is very clearly scarring where there was some sort of bite mark through the armor, like something huge too.

The mouth on this thing looks like almost the size of Bree's head, like it's huge. And nothing's happened yet, but there is a very good chance that if I lose my patience or temper and don't get a handle on it quickly, I could be one of them. And almost to head off the group, she's gonna hold her hand up. I've already given Merrick very clear instructions if it looks like that could happen, even slightly he's supposed to put me down. - Merrick's gonna try to do something really clever and cool and when she talks about that, Merrick's made a promise and put me down, he's gonna do something with the silver dagger.

Like he's gonna have it like go, like almost like a butterfly knife or something, like do a cool thing. He's kind of trying to make a little lightness out of this, but he's also trying to be serious. Like he's like, no, I got this you guys. - Okay, well do me a favor. - I'm gonna kill the fuck out of her. (laughing) - Hilarious guys. - He's trying to say, nope, nope, we made it, like I got it packed, I'm her leash or whatever. - Do it, then do it, nailed it. - Do me a favor, roll a dexterity check and on a 12 or higher, you're gonna pull off some really cool stuff.

- Okay, it's not like elaborate, right? This is gonna be like 20 minutes of a magic trick. It's just like, whoosh. - That's why it's not a very high check, it's yeah. - This is like a drummer doing a really cool thing. - Right. - Wait, that's my dexterity score. - Oh, you want the plus, yeah, you go. Oh yeah, you're good, yeah, you're gonna. - Nailed it. - Oh yeah. - So what I'm imagining happens is that, I flip the knife up, like it's the silver dagger, right? And I balance it on the tip of my finger for just a second and then go, like I, and then I grab the hill.

- Halluna will immediately lean away and sort of look at you like, what the fuck are you doing? - Merrick's trying to make this all about himself. - And they sort of, they're little wild eyed, like any sudden movement, they're sort of like, eh. - How would everyone else be reacting to the information? - I mean, I think Ordon's the only one hearing it for the first time because we did know last night. So Santos feels exactly the same way, which is, oh, a werewolf is. - Ordon wouldn't exactly be feeling comfortable with this information, but I guess at this point, he trusts Merrick enough, so he's not gonna say anything, he's not going to, he's not gonna be staring daggers at her or anything, but he probably has small signs of discomfort.

- Okay, after all of this is out, Tessia would look at this as not wasted time, but time that she could be spent trying to help you out. So she's gonna get ready and stand up if there's a silence at some point. If you'll all excuse me, I'm going to speak to some people and get the ball rolling, as it were. - When she stands up, Merrick's gonna stand up as well, like respectfully. - She's gonna slightly nod her head and then she is going to leave this room. What about everyone else? What's everyone thinking? - Luna's thinking, what the fuck is he doing with that knife?

- By the way, he has stopped messing with the knife, by the way, that was just like a-- - Wait, yeah, I didn't, I didn't, yeah. - It's like, it's the equivalent of him patting his gun. Right, like, I got this, right? Yeah, just making sure. - I didn't think that that was a thing, you're just continuing to be juggling it. - Yeah, he's throwing it at the ceiling and it's sticking in it. - There's just tons of daggers above him. What, what? - Like a middle schooler with a pencil. (laughing) - Look, I can make it bend guys, look, it's magic. - Fantas is just waiting to be told what to do, 'cause like, I guess we're just waiting for word from Tessa.

- Brie would actually, Brie would be insanely curious about a few things, so after a beat, she'd look to Merrick and the party, but I mean, so what exactly is the plan here? What's, do we have a date? Do we, is it just going to be us going up there? - These are great questions. That was actually a question I have for you, Jason, is I can't remember from session to session how much time we have left. - Well, here's the thing, right now you guys have somewhere in the area of, right about now, it would be 48 days? 49 days, somewhere in there. Blood noon is the fourth of Rangway, so you, yeah, you have less than two months, and you know that.

- Plenty of time. - Mm-hmm. - Plenty of time. Yeah, so he'll, he'll intimate that, right, like. - Yeah. - We've got a matter of weeks, not months. The plan is, we've got guidelines at best about what we're supposed to do, and the truth is, is that I don't know what the plan is. I'm grasping a little bit. I just know that we need to get there. If we're not there, we can't do anything. In the meantime, we've got books from a library that kind of are letting us know what we're supposed to do, and we've gotta study up, and we've gotta read, and we've got enough time to be able to do that, and then get there.

And especially if we can get something from Tessia, like Amara, or something that can help us get there in a quicker amount of time than trekking it up that way. I thought, I don't know, Bree. I don't know what the plan is. I know that the plan is to stop the demons, and potentially to de-trap the gods, but I don't know if one's gonna be at the cost of another, and what's the consequence of everything. I don't know. I do know one thing. Whatever side Darmok is on, that's bad. So that's my goal right now, is to make sure that the demon army isn't gonna make its way here.

If that's at the expense of every last god, then so be it. - All right. When exactly did you pick up the orden and Thanos? I'm sorry. - Well, actually we met Thanos here in Brightport not that long ago. Actually, it's just also a matter of weeks. Thanos joined us 'cause we needed some firepower after we lost Una. And when he says that, he's gonna realize his choice of words, and make sure that he's like, "No, no, no, she left." - Yeah, you told me that. Where exactly? Is she gonna be meeting us at some point? Does she know about any of this? - As far as I know, she doesn't.

I know that she's looking into it just like we were. We just went separate directions. There's a chance that she's up that way, but we haven't been in contact, so I don't even know. There's no plan. I don't even know if she's on board with any of this anymore. And I don't even know if she's, and that he's gonna stop himself and just kind of wave it away. - Did she ever get the letter I sent? - Which letter? - I sent it while I was in Lockford. It was after the bite. I really didn't know what was gonna happen, so I wanted to let her know. - I don't know. I don't think so.

I'm sorry. - All right. I'll have to tell her later then. - Yeah, we'll find her. So we decided to go look for some of this information, right, we're trying to save Tharia or whatever. So we go up north into some mountains and that's where we came upon Ordon and he's gonna give a thumbs up to Ordon. - Ordon will smile and nod. - Ordon, why don't you tell Bree what made you leave Stonesunder? I mean, if we're all gonna be in this together, we gotta know each other, right? - Right. I've had my own questions for a long time about Morden. I didn't realize that other faiths and other places were experiencing similar thoughts.

It basically cost me my military career and everyone thought I was crazy. So kept it to myself and tried to put it away and been working as a blacksmith for a long time now. But even the crafting of the dwarves has lost its edge. So without any help from the clerics, the priests all turning a blind eye, I decided to set out and try to find answers for myself. I was on my way to see the mages when I stumbled upon these guys in the middle of nowhere and they tell me the gods are locked away. I don't know if I believe that, but it's the best that I have to go on right now.

And Ordon will kinda stare at Merrick right now and say, I'll do anything to get Morden back. - I think Merrick understands somewhere deep down all about the conflicts and faith and no matter what he did about getting angry with the monitor, I think he also understands totally being, I would do anything to be able to be in touch, right? So he's gonna like super nod, like, yeah, no, I get it. And listen, I know I said, I wanna stop this army even if that means that gods can't come back. I want everything to happen the right way. Everybody gets happy, win-win, no demons, the gods are where they need to be.

Whatever the right thing is to do, we'll make it happen. That's my goal. - Fair enough. - So we have books to pour through, I guess. - And some waiting to do and honestly, some planning. - Santa's gonna cross your arms. Great, more books. - And Ordon will grumble with that. - At least we can do it in the light of day, right? We can read the garden. - I love library. - There were cool ghosts there. They couldn't punch them. They were still pretty neat. - Cool, maybe possibly ghosts. We still don't have ghosts. - They were ghosts. - So, okay, quick question. Who's going to this little library here?

And when I say library, it's basically her office. Like there's tons of books in there, but it's not like a full-fledged, like huge library. It's not even as big as the one in Esther Holt. - No, thank you. - All righty. - Wow, okay, so Thanos is out because Thanos is Thanos. - Thanos already left, she's in the basement again. - Jesus Christ. - Any other girls in here? - Ladies, eyebrow wiggle. - Wow, Ordon, I guess he proposed the idea it would be wrong of him to then back out. So as much as he hates the idea of sitting in a room reading for the afternoon, he would be joining Merrick and I guess Bree.

- Rest in peace, Ordon. - It really is a shame that John Zia isn't here. - Yeah, this would probably be faster. - Okay, so we've got Ordon. Is Bree going for sure? Is Bree like, let's do this? Bree's not a bookie type, not so much anyway. Like I think at first she would go and then if it's not one of those things where you literally turn to the page where it's like, oh, awesome, it would be like, okay, I can't really help here. I am going to stretch my legs, that type of thing. So I think she'd be there for a good 10, 15 minutes and then just bail. - Sweet, that's-- - Meanwhile, American ordinary there.

- Wow, these are books, awesome. Okay, bye. - Wow. - Okay. All right, well, let's do that then. Kaluna, what's Kaluna gonna do? - Kaluna would actually try to catch Bree alone at some point. - Okay, let's do this. - Preferably in a dark alley. - Gonna fuck you up. - I told you I'd fuck you up. So let's have Merrick and Ordon just in the library looking for things and this is... So, okay, I'm gonna ask for a roll from Ordon and Merrick in just a minute just to see how much time is gonna pass before they find something of note. Bree would leave, like I said, about 10, 15 minutes into this, just not even make a big deal out of it, just like, okay, I'm just gonna-- - Just go in.

- Yeah, I'm gonna maybe stretch my legs, maybe, yeah, something. So depending on where Kaluna was, that would probably be the time that you'd run into, run into Bree. - Kaluna was waiting right outside the library with, you know, just ready to, no. - With a second knife. - Yeah. How many knives do they have actually? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, they would be-- - I just pictured the entire joke from Atlantis where the bomber guy just keeps taking out knives and like swords and shit. - The dream. Yeah, I think Kaluna would probably be like outside. I don't know if Bree would go out there, but.

- Probably, not venture far from the house at all. If anything, it would just be like, like literally just stretch her legs, get air. Like it's not, like she doesn't really feel comfortable in the house 'cause it's not her place and it's not, you know, she's just kind of a guest. So yeah, like they'd run into each other eventually. So yeah. - It would probably be incredibly awkward. - Oh yes. 'Cause I think Kaluna would probably see Bree and sort of like wave and then just sort of stare at her for a little bit. - She'd wave back probably awkwardly, like hi, we were just talking to each other.

- And then Kaluna would probably like shuffle closer. Not like super close, not uncomfortably so, like Kaluna normally is, but you know, just sort of within a good like whispering distance or talking quietly distance. - And they'd say, "Um, just um." (laughs) - Are you okay? - We um, and they'll fidget a little bit. How did it go? - How did what go? - Lockford. - Oh. - Um, I mean, we killed the werewolves. I have all the ones that we knew of. We think we got their pack leader and there were a few survivors. I'll be honest, it's not great there. - Kaluna's going to look sort of notably excited when she says, "We got the leader." And most of the ones that we saw and they sort of, they don't react the way that they should when she says that there's not a lot of survivors.

- Oh, okay. - Not necessarily like, "Oh, that's great, "that's extra good." But you know, they're not going to be any less enthusiastic. - Right. - But then they'll say, "Um, did anyone, "do you know if?" And they're clearly, they're struggling really hard. - Right. - "Do you know if any got away at all? "Maybe someone missed one or it wasn't there?" Or, and they're clearly starting to low key panic. - Right. Well, we only saw the one pack and from what we hear in Lockford, that's the majority of what was attacking the town. None of the ones from that pack got away.

- Then Kaluna will sort of nod very much like, "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay, good, cool." And then they'll sort of very hesitantly make the motion to clap her on the shoulder, but they're doing it so slowly that they're just going to sort of set their hand there. - Like you're afraid, like she's a bomb, you're afraid of setting off. - Yeah, it's a mixture of like, I don't want to startle you and I don't know what I'm doing. - Did you know someone in Lockford? - They'll immediately shake their head. We, um, our family's near there. - Really? Um, I'm not, forgive me, I don't, I don't know much about Wildenn, so, do they live in a town or?

- Not like you would. - And there's gonna be a few beads where, like she's trying to like, okay, then how, and then, do they live in the forest? - Kaluna will nod. - In the Silver Glade. - Kaluna will nod again. But sort of like what they'll look like, yes, the Silver Glade, yes, honey. - How? - Kaluna will sort of tilt their head, like, what do you mean how? - I mean, don't get me wrong, please don't take this the wrong way, it's just, that's a, that's a really dangerous place and. - Kaluna would sort of bark a laugh, just the ha. Are the Wildenn, you know, expert fighters or trappers or something?

- I don't know, Jason, are they? (laughs) - The Wildenn as a culture would probably take more after like Kaluna, like Kaluna is not an outlier in the Wildenn culture. Not a, there's not a lot of beefy Wildenn, like beefy, like sword swinging Wildenn. - Are you absolutely sure? I'm pretty sure that's what Kaluna is. (laughs) Sewing in a sword all day, every day. But yeah, they would sort of shrug. Kind of like, they're not good enough with words to express the Wildenn culture. - Um, I really hope, I really hope they're okay. We didn't see anything, we didn't see anything but the wolves while we were out there.

But we weren't, we weren't in the forest for very long. The whole thing barely took a day. - Kaluna will just sort of nod again. Just, they're clearly, they're still tense because they're, they're a grumpy, grumpy, spiky person. But they clearly, they feel a lot better. They sort of have a grin on now. Like, yeah, shit's good now, guys. - Um, can I get, let me get Ordon and, yeah, let me get Ordon and Marek to roll a perception check here. - Boom. - Oh, good Lord. - Boom. - Wouldn't roll and then finally, but. - Well, we're gonna take the first one. - Yeah. - I appreciate that.

- Yeah, you are, 'cause it's fucking different. - It's drastically different. (laughing) - It's as different as they get. (laughing) - Okay, well, you are both gonna find some stuff. - Sweet. - So a lot of these books you're gonna pour through and a lot of these, a lot of these books are very tiefling centric, right? 'Cause there was a long, as you know, there's a long stretch of Therian history that focused, there were a lot of people convinced solidly that, oh, tieflings are demons. Oh yeah, they've been sent from hell and they're here to corrupt our youth and all that kind of shit.

Like anything that you can think of, any conspiracy theory type thing that you can think of. And a lot of it is focused on that. Like some of them are very old, like picture like movie strips from the '50s that are very outdated and they use terms and terminology that's just offensive now. And you're like, oh God, we don't say those words anymore. So that type of thing, but they're meant to be informative. And it's like, you can spot the tiefling by that kind of thing. Very like, but they don't use words like tiefling. They use very hurtful slurs sometimes.

So yeah, a lot of stuff like that. And you're gonna be like cycling through all that and it's like, okay, this is not what we're looking for. Eventually though, you are gonna get the actual information about demons. And it's almost as if these books were, okay, these books have nothing to do with tieflings and it's almost like they were included out of ignorance, right? Like someone's just like, yeah, and you're reading it's like, oh, this has nothing to do with tieflings. This is about actual demons. Like someone has written some firsthand accounts somehow.

Like these stories go back and it's very much painting a picture of what the underworld would be like based on what these people have seen. It looks like these accounts are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old. Like these go back a ways. Some of these books are practically falling apart. And basically what it's painting is that the underworld is this massive expanse. And it's sort of confusing what might be drow territory and what might be what the aetherian equivalent of hell would be. And it's painting demons of all shapes and sizes. Like we're talking hulking behemoths all the way down to impish creatures like the one that's hanging out with Jadzia right now.

Just huge winged beasts. And the environment, it's painting is one of complete and utter chaos. Like there might be someone at the top controlling or that has more power. But it's all just a violent prison yard all the time. And everyone's trying to get a leg up on everyone else and try to assume power. And they were literally tear each other limb from limb. These are horrible atrocities. Like if this were to be released onto everyday life on the surface world, there's not a word for how destructive it would be. It would be the end of the world essentially.

And it would be something that you could combat in that you could fight each one of these, but it's so numerous. And so just imagine a sea, just an endless sea of horrible monsters. Pouring out of a central spot. Now that's the bad news. And the good news is that you are gonna find a little bit more information that perhaps you missed while you're in the library or something like that. But do you remember the whole seal thing? The entire focal point is this seal and the rituals that would open it up either for the demons or to release the gods. - Yes, go on.

- There's a bit more information. And you're gonna find that this ties in very, very closely with what you had found. There are two different incantations, right? The ceremony is almost exactly the same in that you need at least one psion. You're gonna need a shitload of energy. And one of these incantations would release the gods. That is to undo what the Eladrin did. And the other incantation would release the demons. These are two separate things. The information that you're gonna pick up though is that on top of it being a massive amount of energy, it would in all likelihood kill the person channeling the energy.

It would essentially rip them to shreds. - Well, shit. So that's the good news. - The good news is that you found the information. The information isn't necessarily good. - All right, what does it say about two people? (laughs) - Well, it's not that it's... Well, okay, it's immensely draining on that person. It would involve a hell of a lot of concentration and almost someone who's masterful with psionic energy or someone who could withstand the pain. And on top of that, it's the seal itself. Basically, once that pops, it would just, either way, no matter what incantation you're doing, it's a sacrifice essentially.

And that's kind of goes into the pictures and stuff you've seen, like the Thanatos found. It just didn't go into a great amount of detail. It's almost to the people in the library, it was almost a given. It was assumed. It was like, oh yeah, you need a sacrifice. That's good, yeah. There's gonna be one bit of information on top of all of this. And it's information about Vecna. And this is going to, if you remember what Julie took off, what Julie and Una took off to find in both. It kind of goes into great detail about the temple of Vecna. And what isn't gone into in the book that Julie took with her is that there are two.

There was one temple in the north on the mainland, which is the one they were heading to. And then there's a second on the continent of Kian, somewhere near the seal. And it goes into these details because it's talking about an artifact that could help fight the demons. The artifact is split into two. And you can kind of guess where I'm going from there. Yeah, I know where you're going with this. So, American Ordnance, that's what you found. And it's a hell of a lot of information. I have one other question. Is there any information about what would happen if the ceremony is not performed properly?

It doesn't go into a great amount of detail. But what you're seeing is that the ceremony has to be performed to completion. Once it's started, that's it. For the scion, anyway. And it looks to be that it would kill the scion no matter what. Once it's started, that's it. Okay. Okay, I have a question. Okay. Well, shit, that's interesting information. Good news, good stuff about that is we may have something that could help us fight the demons. The bad news is that it's in a couple of different places. The good news is is that we're headed to one of those places anyway.

Bad news is we're not headed to the other one. The good news is that Una and Julia, Julie, sorry, went up that way and maybe they'll come across the other half. The bad news is we may never see Una and Julia again anyway. There you go. - The good news is we had sandwiches this morning. - That's true. So true. - Sandwiches for breakfast? No, sandwich past cereals. - Could he curse anyone? - So for the record, Thanos would be snooping around again. Do I find anything cool? - I was about to ask. - Do me a favor and roll a perception check. Let's see what Thanos would find here.

- Okay, come on. Don't let me down again. Sweet, 25. - That's not bad. That's not bad. Is there anything specifically Thanos would be looking for or is it just pretty much I'm going to fuck around and see if I can find something? - Pretty much that. I'm just gonna fuck around, but then follow her instincts as far as where the interesting stuff is. She's not just gonna wander away from cool stuff. - Right. - She's 2000. - I would feel like downstairs would probably be where Thanos would go if I had to take a guess. - Probably, yeah. - Probably, okay. - It's kind of like a child in a grocery store.

Eventually they're gonna find the toy aisle. - Right, that's true. Okay. - Except this is a sacrificial chamber. - So yeah, Thanos would, it wouldn't take her long to kind of explore the area she's already seen and take a look around. The upstairs seems to be mostly a living space, a lived in area. Do me a favor roll a dungeoneering check. - 25. - All right. This is where things get interesting. Okay. - Ooh. - So Thanos is gonna pass the area where she found Bree and continue down this way. And there is a large set of double doors way at the end of the hall, like a big, like a huge set of double doors.

And before that, there's gonna be, there's gonna be a room kind of off to the side. It's a larger chamber than these, like either the jail cell type things or the dining room. It's a pretty big chamber. So which one of these would, which one of these would Thanos be interested in more, do you think? - Could I perception check to see like more about them or is it literally just like. - Okay, here's the thing. This room, the one that's kind of a larger chamber before you get to the huge set of double doors is largely bare for the most part. It looks like it could have been used for something, maybe a meeting hall, something like that.

But Thanos is gonna notice where a portion of the wall doesn't look like it matches the rest of it. - Ooh, that's, could I look closer at the part of the wall that doesn't match? - Oh, you sure can. - Would that be dungeoneering or perception? - The dungeoneering check allowed you to see it and you notice that there could be, it looks about large enough where a person could fit through it. Almost door shape, but not quite. So you're guessing it's maybe some sort of secret passageway. - All right, Thanos will look around for some way to open it first, but we all know what will happen if she doesn't find a way to open it.

So let's start with the first thing. - Oh man. Do me a favor, roll perception. - Hey, 30. - Okay, yeah. It looks like there's a portion of the wall that sort of acts like a button. - I just had like a flash of just like, that was a supporting wall. No. - Everyone's kind of chilling upstairs and all of a sudden, blam, just portions of the wall are being punched out downstairs. - The door was locked, I didn't. - So finding that, finding that, Thanos would press it and this portion of the wall is going to sort of slide back. And there's gonna be a long spider, like a cobweb filled hallway.

- Cool. All right, before I go in, is there anything like around Thanos that she could put in the like door to keep it open just in case it tries to close? - In this room, there would be, there'd be like little, like a couple of odd books and things like that. Most of the room is bare though, but there's a few objects you could shove in there, like a couple of odd pieces of wood, something like that. - Yeah, that's what she'll do then. It's just like stack all the stuff she can find in front of it, just to not let it close all the way, just in case. - Okay, this is gonna be a really dark, really dark hallway too.

- Damn it, Thanos's things shine black, that doesn't help. Is there still a glow to it when she charges? Like is that? - Oh, it's a reddish glow, yeah. - Right, okay. So I guess she could charge and technically light it up a little bit that way. - Okay. - Do I have night vision? Let me check real quick. No, I do not. - Don't believe the gifts or I do. - No, I do not, so she will charge. - And here's the thing, walking and doing that is a little difficult. So it'd be this thing. - Okay, nevermind, fuck it, I'll go in dark. - Okay, I was just gonna say, like you could stop every few feet and try to like illuminate the next few feet in front of you and like it'd be a slow process.

- She'll just keep like two fingers on the wall as she walks. - Okay. - And go a little bit slowly, so she doesn't walk into like a pit or something, that would be lame. So that's gonna be, let's catch up with Thanatos in a little bit. Now the, let's see, Ordon and Merrick. - Yo. - You guys have found what you're gonna find. Kaluna, well, I would imagine after Bree and Kaluna are done talking, Bree would head back inside after a while 'cause she'd feel a little guilty about not helping with any of the research or doing, just kind of not pulling her weight, but yeah, there's not a ton she can do right now.

But she'd go back inside eventually. Ordon and Merrick, what would you do with this newfound information? - Hmm, I feel like if we're both sort of piecing this together, you know, here's a book and here's a book and here's a part and here's a part, I think it's starting to be where Ordon and Merrick are, I would imagine getting into it, right? Like, okay, right? So it looks like there's a temple and there's, but there's actually two temples, like kind of going back and forth like a cool TV show that has a magic room. - Okay. - Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think there's definitely some spirited conversation going on here.

And I mean, a lot of it will be questions about, I mean, do you think that Una and Julia are gonna be able to find that first part of the relic? - That's a great question. I mean, if there's anybody that I would say would do it, it would be Una. If there's anybody I would say could do it, it would be Una. But I don't know if we can count on it just because this is so important, but I don't know. I mean, if that's what they're going after, maybe we should just trust them to do it, right? - Right, but does that mean that we have to go get the other half first or before we, is that what we're thinking?

- I don't know, maybe that's the deal, right? Like, so if we're, it's starting to come together to me, but let me know what you think. Tell me I'm wrong, basically, poke holes in this. But if we're gonna have to be going up to Kien anyway, right, this is where we're going to the seal. If we can sort of do a side trick that's gonna actually help us in the long run, then let's go as fast as we can, let's do it, and let's be prepared. - Well. - There's a lot of holes, I know, like, how are we gonna get the other half of this relic? - Well, I mean, it sounds like our choice is either to head to the temple here first, 'cause if you don't trust Una and Julie to be able to succeed, we could go back 'em up, but I don't know how much time that would take, 'cause I don't know where this other temple is.

It's probably dangerous, and are we even gonna be fighting demons? I mean, if we succeed and we bring back the gods, is all this for nothing? And if we die chasing relics, who's gonna make it to the seal? - Yeah, I guess you're right. We're gonna put all of our eggs in a basket. Is it to get something that's gonna help us fight demons, which kind of makes us feel like we're just assuming that it's gonna happen, right? Or should we put all of our eggs in the basket of, stop this shit, so we don't even need a relic? - But the question is, are all the demons sealed away?

I mean, warlocks make deals with demons, don't they? - Sure. - Well, how? I mean, it seems like they have ways of interacting, and if they're trying to get free, we might have to fight them off of the seal itself. It might not be all or nothing, is what I'm saying. - Yeah. - But that's not even our biggest problem. - What's our biggest problem? - Who's gonna sacrifice themself? - Merrick's gonna, I'm guessing, I kind of imagine him standing over a desk, you know, flipping through book after book. He's gonna stand up kind of straight and kind of look up at the ceiling like he's lost in thought.

- I guess it's gonna be up to them. - That's gonna be a fun conversation. - I know I wouldn't wanna have to make that choice myself, and I don't know. I think that's a bridge we're gonna have to cross later. But I see your point. - Well, I'm saying I'm not sure how much later we can put that off because if we're not gonna be able to control things, if we're not gonna, like we might, this relic might then be a lot more important. - Sounds like we need to just make sure everybody is on the same page, has all the right information, and then we make a plan.

- Agreed. - Should we share this information? Is there anything else that we could glean from these books, Jason, at all? Or we kind of not get it? - I would say that'd be the bulk of the information that you guys find. A lot of the stuff is, like you'd pick up little repeats of things that you already found out in the library. - Cool. I guess, is there anything else about this room that stands out? I mean, I don't wanna go poking around too much, but. - No, it's a lot of Tessie's personal effects. So it's very much those books, and then all kinds of books covering everything.

Just, it looks like she either has a wide array of interests or these are books that were left over when she took over. - Okay. I guess I do have one more question from Merrick though. So who exactly is Tessia? I mean, you introduced me, but what does she do here in Brightport? - So there are several houses in Brightport, right? Sort of, I don't know, think of them like they're big clubs, right? And she's the person who's the leader of this particular club. And historically these houses haven't always been the best places, the nicest of people. They're a little bit underhanded.

Maybe they have their own agendas. Tessia came into power, I guess you'd say, but she's not after power. She's just the right person to be able to lead a house like this. She's one of the good ones. There aren't many of those around. - Okay, good to know. Thanks. Get the group together. - Yeah, we need to talk. We need to let everybody know what we found out. And you've got to maybe ask some tough questions. So I think Merrick would, you know, let's do it. Let's go out and see if we can find everybody. - Here's the thing about that. Finding Kaluna and Bree, that'd be pretty easy.

If you were to ask them if they've seen Thanos, no one will have done that since you guys split up, essentially. - Is this why you guys were talking about toddler leashes? - Yes. (sighs) - I'm gonna find some cool shit you guys can't even share. Or I'm gonna fall into a pit and die. (laughs) - Well, at least that'll answer who's gonna sacrifice themselves pretty much. - What do you know about those guys? - This is actually one of the things me and Jamie used to talk about in Dwarven. - What? - Leashing Thanos. - You guys are dicks. - Well, how's about we catch up with Thanos?

- So this hallway continues on for a while. And eventually, you're almost gonna stumble over it but your eyes are starting to adjust to the dark a bit. So you can kind of make out outlines and shapes of things like that. So there's the odd board or something that'll sort of, it'll almost be low enough that Thanos would have to duck. And you're guessing that's for load-bearing purposes, something like that. And eventually, Thanos is gonna get to a point where there's sort of a thinner hallway that stretches forward and then a set of stairs that lead upward.

- Oh, that's a hard choice. Could I perception check both? - You can, but it's gonna be a really difficult check because you're almost-- - It's dark. - Yeah. - I can light up my hand. - You could. - I'll light up my hand and then perception check. - Okay. - All right. - You just kind of lighten up and then shining it up the stairs and then down the light stairs. 18, it's not good, but it's not bad. - Amazing. The path that leads forward, it's really tough to tell, but it almost looks like there's some sort of light coming from that area. The path leading upward, it looks like the stairs stretch up, wrap around, and then continue to go up.

It's very tough to make out any other shapes beyond that. - How below the house am I? Like, could those stairs lead back up to the house or would there be like a middle room somewhere in between? Just guessing, like obviously I wouldn't know for sure, but if Fanta's had a guess, is there like-- - You're guessing that that either leads back upstairs because the stairs are so numerous that it's like, okay, that probably leads either to a room in the house that's inaccessible unless you went through this basement or like kind of leads back into one of the rooms just not an obvious way.

- All right, then she'll keep going forward then. - All right. - But sneaky, as sneaky as she can be. - Okay, the rest of the group. Okay, you guys have a decision to make. After you guys figure out that Thanos is not with you and you don't know where she is, is this a situation where you tell David and just go, look, I don't know where she is, she's somewhere in this house, I'm very sorry, or do you try to find her on your own? - Ordon's not one to ask for help when not necessary, so I think Ordon would start looking around. - Okay. - And if he was unable to find her, then we can bring someone else in.

- Well, I feel like Merrick would be totally fine with Ordon going off, like, okay, cool, Ordon's gonna go see if he can find her, I'm gonna go find David, like he's gonna do both. Let's see if we can find her, but at the same time, let's get David on this too, because we are guests in this house and the last thing I wanna do is piss somebody off or have Thanos blow up something or steal something. Or Merrick's pretty, you know, he's been trying to be super deferent to Tessa and really wants things to go off without a hitch, so he's gonna go find David.

- Oh, okay. - And basically say what you just said, right? It's like, I'm really, really sorry. (laughing) - I know this is ridiculous, but our, yeah. - We lost our sign. - The other lost our sign, the other, yeah. - Who would Kaluna be going with? - Kaluna would be sticking with Bree, actually, wherever she decides to go. - I think Bree would just start looking around, like just start, here's the thing, okay, Ordon, let's have Ordon and Bree roll an intelligence check. I wanna see something. - Oh, good Lord. - Jesus fucking Christ. - God damn, okay. - Guys, I had a premonition, she's downstairs in a fucking secret passage.

(laughing) - I saw in my mind's eye. - Light, which I think means she might be dead, let's go. - Oh shit. - What? - Oh my God. - Well, fine, one on me. - Sorry. - And then Bree takes out her GPS, she's like, we're new to this. - Don't worry guys, I put a bug on her, we can track her. (laughing) - Like a really sweet dog. - Both of them are going to, I think they're both going to think for a minute and go, if I were a child and I wanted to get into some shit, where would I go? And both of you would sort of, I think Bree would pretty easily piece together, it's like, okay, well, she was really interested in downstairs before she ran into me, so it stands to reason that if there was something interesting, it's probably downstairs.

And I'd say both of you reached that conclusion. So that's where Bree's going to go. - Yeah, and Ordern will be right there. - I'd like to clarify that Kaluna is not helping at all. (laughing) They're not, they're fairly certain that Thanatos can take care of herself for some reason. But they're mostly just, they're making sure that Bree doesn't get stressed out, basically. That's the job that they've taken on. - Just giving her back massages. - It's okay, dude. We'll find her, it's fine. - But it accidentally really hurts because you're a fucking tree. - Listen, it's not Kaluna's fault that they have pointy bits, okay?

- That makes it sound like a totally different thing. - Yeah, yeah, I regret immediately. - There's a Madonna moment in there somewhere. - 2%, I gotta go, bye. - On the way downstairs, and sort of backtracking, looking in every room, just checking, Bree would turn to you guys and, does she usually run off like this? - Yeah, pretty much. - Kaluna will shrug. - And after you answer, why do you, why don't you just tell her to stay put? - I mean, I get it. I'm getting the impression she's a psion from what, from what Merrick said, but she's just a kid. She's gonna get hurt.

- Telling Thanatos to do anything that Thanatos doesn't want to do is like spitting on a forest fire. - Well, she's gonna end up either getting herself hurt or one of you one day if she isn't gonna follow any instructions or orders. I don't know what your relationship with her is, but. - Merrick hired her on and she's been mostly a help in combat. - So wait, okay, you said hired her on, she's charging you for this? - Maybe, you'd have to ask Merrick. - I thought maybe she was an orphan or in trouble and something that if. - Merrick brought her on before I was here, so my understanding is they have an agreement.

- She, Brie would automatically look to Kaluna. - Kaluna would immediately look away. Like, sort of like shuffle their feet a little bit, like, hmm. And they'll just sort of say, we don't think we have room to talk with her. - Brie would just like, all right, and just sort of double down, just like move forward faster, checking rooms. - I would say by this time, Jasper would have found David and I, I imagine the conversation would pretty much go like you, like you said it would, and he would get a few people to start looking. Thanos. - Howdy. - You're gonna reach the end of this hallway.

There's a door at the end of this hallway. At the bottom, at the base of this door, coming out from underneath of it, is gonna be this very faint blue glow. Now there is, there's a latch on this door. What would Thanos like to do? - I guess the first thing Thanos would do is like put her hand on the door, make sure it's not hot or anything, 'cause that's what you do, and there's light beneath the door, and you don't know what it is. Check for hot and cold, whatever. Is it hot or cold or anything? - It feels room temperature to you. - Okay, cool. I guess she would just open the door, like.

- Okay. - It's gonna get me killed, but that's what she'd do. - This door is going to swing open slowly, and there's gonna be a fairly loud creak that comes from it. And that blue light is going to bathe the hallway behind you. And it's not overbearing or bright, it's just sort of like a very pale glow. And what it looks like is the, in between the stone etchings all over the floor, and up the walls kind of spider webbing up, is sort of a light blue that bathes in between. It's almost like someone poured some sort of molten gel, and it's just luminescent.

Almost like it's infected the room, and it's stretching up toward the ceiling, but never quite reaching that far. Now, I want you to do me a favor and roll a perception check. - Okay. I didn't immediately die, so this is looking good. What? 32. That was almost a creak. - If Thanos was looking for interesting shit, Thanos just found the motherload of interesting shit. - Noice. - This room is filled to the brim with all kinds of magical accoutrement, if you will. And we're talking all fields of magic. We're talking blood magic. We're talking just straight up, you know, studious book magic.

I mean, like there's a hell of a lot of shit in here. Very specifically, there is a table on the right side of the room after you walk in. And this room's fairly large, not huge, but this is obviously some sort of hidden workshop or something. This is a hideaway. And on the table, there appears to be something that almost shaped like a lamp, something like that. And the thing is black with gold etching. And kind of scattered about the room are all types of different, it looks like there are these little straw men that are bound together with twine. There are different, they're small bowls, some of which are actually still filled with blood.

There look to be like magical items, like not weapons, but there are definitely objects that are either of some importance or powerful or something. And this room is just filled to the brim with that kind of shit. But the table is the something that would stick out to Thanos, just because there's obviously some reverence to the items sitting on it. It's sat there by itself, whereas the rest of the room is kind of cluttered. Lots of books, lots of things like that. But this table specifically is a side by itself. - So Thanos will enter the room and then her eyes will kind of go wide and she'll just whisper to herself, "Awesome." And then she'll go in and, "Could I do like a history check on this one like special item first?" - Yeah, you sure can.

- Well, that's not gonna work. That's a 16. - Historically, this object isn't gonna stick out to Thanos at all. - Right. I guess I perception check it next to see if she can figure out what it's supposed to do on her own. - All right. - That is also a 16. (laughing) - Looking at the item, Thanos isn't going to see where, it looks fairly ordinary from the outset. It looks like it just kind of looks like it might hold liquid, like it might be like maybe decoration, something like that. But nothing about it screams like, "Oh my God, this is a powerful item." It just kind of looks very nondescript.

- Well, if that's the case, then she'd just go start looking at other shit. Like if she's like, "Okay, that's not interesting." She just walk away and look at other stuff now. - Okay. - Damn it, I bet that's actually really cool too. - Arcana, stealth. - Do a heel check on it. I don't care, just do something. - Bluff it. - Bluff it. - Is it made of wood? Can I nature it? (laughing) - Oh God. - Technically the sun is also light, so I should be able to nature this. - All light comes from the sun, you guys. Didn't you know? - Yes. - Let's catch up with Bree, Bree, Orton and Kaluna.

- Go team. - Yeah, let's, I would say by now by process of elimination. You've narrowed it down to where, where Antis would have gone. There'd be an open door, there'd be the passage open and stuff. Let me ask a question. What would you guys like to do? Would you just kind of blindly chase after her or would you just assume this is where she went or what? - If, I mean, based on your description, we're pretty sure this is where she went. Orton would just, without hesitation, head down. - Okay, so this, okay, this is interesting. I pretty sure, is Orton the only one with any low light vision?

- No, Kaluna has low light. - Does Kaluna, okay. - They live in the spoopy woods. - Oh, that's true. Okay, so both of you will be able to see pretty clearly and thus you'd probably make your way through here a little quicker than Thanos did. One more check on Thanos. So based on the descriptions of things in this room, is there something else that you think would kind of draw Thanos in or, 'cause the books aren't gonna do it, I'm guessing. - Nah, I hate to this, could you describe the other things again? - Sure, no, no, no. There's all kinds of, a lot of it is what appear to be either like junk items or whatever, but they're placed, they're kind of placed on a shelf by themselves or something like that, like the little straw men that are wrapped up in twine or the lamp sitting there or any number of small, like there's like little orbs and stuff kind of decorated around the room and lots of potions, like lots of jars filled with like mysterious liquids and things.

- I guess given those descriptions, the first thing she would walk up to is the twine people. - Okay, what would Thanos do? First, I'm gonna try another, I guess history wouldn't really do it for that particular item. Like, well, maybe. What would I do to like figure out more about that item? Would it be history? - You could do a history, you could do Arcana. - They're both the same, I guess I'll do Arcana. Hey, that's new and different. (laughing) I'm the twine, the book. Anyway. - What pact with a mediocre demon did you make? (laughing) - Thanos is gonna get closer to these objects and they're semi close to the table with the lamp and it's kind of catty cornered.

There's a shelf full of potions and things like that. And as Thanos gets closer, whatever the Gidzerai equivalent is for the hairs on your arm standing up, like just the feeling that like, okay, there's something very, very wrong here or something powerful, something. It's just, something is not right. Gonna get a very uneasy feeling. - I guess she'd probably leave those alone then. Could she go through the potions and see if there's any she recognizes? Like she is literally like just moving from item to item. - Right, just pinballing around the room and stuff.

Yeah. - Again, the kid in the toy aisle section still applies here. Let's see here, you can absolutely do that. Do me a favor and roll an Arcana check again. - I get a fucking, hey, 24. - There you go. A lot of these aren't, you'd expect, okay, if someone were brewing potions or something like that, usually it's for benefit, healing potions, something like that. Now, a lot of these, Thanos wouldn't recognize or would out, off the bat, recognize them as dangerous. And it's the way they're bottled. A lot of healing potions and things like that would be very accessible.

It's very easy to get the lid off, that type of thing. These are capped and sometimes double capped, very secure bottles. If these were to fall over, it probably wouldn't break, that type of thing. And Thanos is gonna get from that, that there is some very dangerous liquids sitting on the shelf. - Like volatile, like explosive or like poison? - Not explosive. You're guessing, this doesn't really seem like the type of place to build explosives. Because where Thanos comes from, that is something that people make, is sort of liquids that are volatile when mixed together and will explode.

It doesn't look like that. What it looks like is, like a small amount of this would perhaps kill somebody, a large amount could kill a lot of people. Like you're getting the sense that there's a very good reason why these are underground, stored the way they are, away from people. - And into the pack they go. - Oh wow. - Is that a problem? - No. - Is it gonna happen? Okay. - We'll see, we'll see. So you are, how, okay. Let me ask a question. How much of these? - Are they all the same or are they all like different colors? - They're different colors. - Okay. Oh man, now I don't know which one to pick. 'Cause she'd probably only take like one or two.

Like she wouldn't take all of them. That'd be fucking rude. - I already asked if she recognized them, so I can't do like another role to like, but seriously does she recognize them? - No, again, it's just by color, unless you were to test them somehow or something. And it's not like Thanatos has some sort of like, a hell of a lot of practice in brewing or, or potion making that type of thing. - Right. - Being Gith's or I, I'm sure at some point, someone tried to teach her about something like that. - She probably did not pay any attention. - Probably not.

- What colors are there to choose from? - There's kind of an off yellow. There's a deep red. Couple of them are various shades of like, kind of a putrid, like a purplish black. - Ooh, the word putrid makes me wanna hesitate because someone suggested zombie juice in the thread. And now I'm like, maybe stray away from the putrid ones. I guess she'd take the red one. - Okay. - And just, just tuck that away. Maybe wrap it in a spare cloth if she had it. - Okay. Which I mean, it's your, it's your pack that like, pretty much all of your possessions are on your back for the most part.

So I would imagine there'd be some kind of cloth or something you could wrap that in. - All right. And she will put that in her bag. - Guys, I think that's a pretty good time for us to stop for the night. - Oh no, no, no. - Spooky. Hope you enjoy your weird urine samples. (laughing) I hope she doesn't kill us with her weird. - I'm a little bit scared because of the way Jason said that like, okay, here we go. It's like, it's in a bottle. I don't. - This is what actually, these are demons. This is the demon bottle. This is the demon army. You got it. And okay. - You know, if we had a cranky robot on our team, he'd probably be able to tell us what it is.

- Oh my God. We're back on this. Hey everybody. This is Jasper from group three. I hope that you enjoyed the episode and that nobody died and or did anything horribly wrong. I'm sure since it's group three that nobody did. Now, what I'm asking of you is to go check out our website, dandrpodcast.com, because on there you're gonna find all the links and all the ways to get to all the things like Twitter and Facebook and the DNR forums. And also of course, patreon.com, which is patreon.com/dandr. And there you can put a buck or two in and get some really great content, especially if you want to hear about horrible things that I did to my wife with an exploding basketball.

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